Stop Press
by hasriona
Summary: "All I've ever wanted, until quite recently, is to grab and clamour at the speck of the future that lies ahead of me, whilst running away from the monster of the past that lay behind. Only when I had successfully grabbed my future is when I turned to face my past in the eye." In a moment of contemplation, Harry ponders how the media has affected his life, for the better or worse.
I find myself submissively scanning through the old albums we have in the attic. Call it sentimental, but I was looking at them for reasons that could not be ever considered sanctimonious.

A thin layer of powdery dust had been sprinkled over the top of one such album by the ever so generous beams of pine and lumber which hung above them. The musky smell of dampness, mixed with the pungency of the old wood, wafted in the thick air like some kind of evocative, gassy creature, the ghost of times past, the cologne of history.

I was alone. Ginny was downstairs, resting, most probably lolling her head on one of the soft cushions which she admired so much, watching her favourite television shows with a smile imprinted on her rosy lips. The mere thought made me beam, but even though I loved her company and radiance more than anything in the world, I felt somewhat attached to be alone in the solace and quiet of the attic, a place I rarely frequented.

It had been like a call, a portent, for me to pull down the old ladder and ascend to the lofty universe which existed at the top of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. In the past, my friends had made albums of remembrance, binding together our memoirs and times of joy into one little book. I had thought, rather pessimistically, that if all the best times of my life could be fit into that book, my life really must be devoid of the amount of happiness which an ordinary untainted human being would experience and recollect in a series of multiple albums. Each album would relay the old years of sepia tone joy and laughter back to the person whenever he felt sentimental, encasing them in the happy memoirs of the past.

They had given me the books, but I never had looked at them. Why would I want to? I never wanted to look at the past. All I've ever wanted, until quite recently, is to grab and clamour at the speck of the future ahead of me, whilst running away from the monster of the past that lay behind. Only when I had successfully grabbed my future is when I turned to face my past in the eye.

I turn the page of the forgotten book, seeing the photographs stuck lovingly onto the page with friendly comments around them, from Ron, and Hermione, and so many others. I smiled, seeing the one photograph of Ron, Hermione, Ginny and I relaxing on the banks of the lake at Hogwarts.

That day had been green, more green than I ever thought possible. The trees swayed in the most gentle Summer winds, singing a lullaby to the idle teenagers at the riverbank. The smell of hydrangeas and forget-me-nots floated high on the winds, tasting so sweet in our mouths, and the loving Sun bathed us in a fresh June glow, as if merrily rewarding us from the frivolous and enjoyably inconsequential troubles of life and school.

We had paddled our feet in the unfathomable water to keep cool, gleefully and playfully splashing each other, leaving us very wet but certainly exultant. Ginny, in her perpetual beauty, had been wearing a light blue sweet-smelling t-shirt, and her hair was glowing in the light of the sun, making it look like it was burning with heavenly flames. Conversely, her gentle compassion and disposition embraced me on that day, the pair of us rolling around in the undergrowth, our lips continually meeting in an amorous encirclement.

I closed my eyes, and I heard the laughter of Hermione and Ginny as Ron fell ingloriously into the lake on that perfect day, later emerging spluttering with pondweed hanging out of his hair. Ginny's laugh was as sweet as treacle, infectious beyond imagination. Even now, I still feel that joyous warm thrill, deep in my stomach, when she looked at me as we returned to the castle, a look of pure adoration and affection. It was then I realized that we would be together forever, no matter what happened to us, that me and her would forever cherish in the quantum of consolation we had found on that day, and hope for more days like it.

A harsh gush of wind pelted the rafters above my head, causing them to whine and groan in frantic struggle; the weather had been forecasted to be bad. Drip, drip, drip, the onslaught of the rain began, leading to a thud, thud, thud as each drop casted against the thick wooden beams, like a tiny army fruitlessly pelting the might of Goliath.

I ignored it for the time being, turning the page to see a slightly yellow newspaper clipping. It was the Daily Prophet, on the day after I had defeated Voldemort, proudly and ecstatically proclaiming the fact. I smiled as I read the article, realising, as I hadn't read it at all before, that the responsible journalist must have been so emotional, or hyped on the event that had unfurled, that he and no one else had noticed that there was a huge barrage of mistakes in the text.

The simple clipping was, I considered, a mere example of how the media can be good. It may be a slight example, barely outweighing the examples pushing the other direction, but just one spark in a dark abyss promises a sense of hope, no matter what the situation may be.

Still, I've never liked the newspapers, and other people plainly know this from my actions and temperament. From the second I passed into this enchanting world under the caring arm and sizeable body of Hagrid, I've been forced into the staring spotlight and expected to play my part for the prying punters. The spotlight shone on me in both white and grey, ultimately white, but in both colours I still had to squint my eyes to see where I was going, and where I should be.

For a boy who has spent most his life being observed by the uncaring and rather malevolent paparazzi, I have not gained any fondness or liking for the world the spotlight has created for me. Unlike the moulded and egocentric celebrities who are famous for somehow extraordinary albeit mundane events, I never felt the need to be passively or actively sucked into this world of corporate disgustingness.

I've been portrayed as famous, infamous, even mad, but the main question I need to ask myself, the number one question of all, is this: why me?

I've been asking myself the same question for seventeen years. Why me?

The answer could be obvious. I choose not to think that, but, in actuality, I come to the wordless conclusion that the obviousness is too apparent for me to possibly ignore, if in fact the obviousness is truly obvious.

One could consider that I'm the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, and now the 'Saviour of Britain', but still, why me?

I asked Ginny this question when the Prophet continued its portrayal of me as, horrifically, the sexiest man in Britain. It wasn't negative publicity, but I didn't like it, and Ginny answered my question with her words of infinite wisdom, she answered the pressing question of just why was it me? She told me that people should get their fifteen minutes of fame, and that should be it, but for every person who goes unnoticed and alone in this world by others, someone must get more than just their fair share of that fifteen minutes to keep everything balanced. As there are so many forgotten people in this world, she said, there must be a lot of people with more than just fifteen minutes of fame destined in their lives. "Everything averages", she pressed.

It sounded impossible, and yet there was irrefutable sense to her soft words. I remember looking at her whilst she held my hands, smiling, saying that that was just her little idea, and I remember myself saying, in a quiet whisper, that I had never heard something so sincere in my life. She had smiled, and joked that I'd been reading too many newspapers.

Drip, drip, drip, droplets of damp drizzle were falling fast into the little den which I had found succour in. I turned another page, showing another Prophet article, this one surrounded with Ron's familiar handwriting with his characterising banter and quips, surrounded by some doodles which, probably, had been hastily crossed out by Hermione for being too sexually orientated.

The article had a headline which made me both elated and riled. It talked of mine and Ginny's relationships with a satirical and pathetically facetious tone to the journalists words, making it seem like the perfect article for a celebrity couple obsessed teenager.

Is that what we are? Ginny and I? A celebrity couple?

Those mere words make me shudder…or perhaps it's just the rain falling en masse onto my clothes.

Growing up in the nosy and inquisitive world of my aunt, gossip magazines could be easily found in her cupboards and wardrobes (but never in the living room, especially when guests came round, as she didn't want to give the working class impression of being anyway interested in such "common" affairs). I remember her trying to make her husband interested in the couples which filled magazines cover to cover, to his intense boredom. He even said, to shut her up:

"Petunia, no one cares about these la-di-dah couples, they're just there for show..."

But how wrong he was. Not that they're just there for show (that's a whole other debate), but that no one cared. It seems as if many, many people are interested in such couples, and I had to come to the annoying conclusion that Ginny and I really did form the basis of the celebrity couple. She was a star Chaser in the Holyhead Harpies, I'd killed Voldemort and had become Head Auror in two years. We are treated like celebrities by the press, mainly because, even if I don't feel like either of us are, we've have an aura of apparent interest.

I turned away from that thought, locking it away in the recesses of my mind. I wanted to throw away the key.

I looked back at the article, and smiled at the reason why, despite the content, it still brought me joy.

It was the picture. Just the picture. A picture of Ginny and I in Diagon Alley, her long hair bouncing with every step, her face grinning with first love and eagerness. I smiled, admiring us as a couple, forgetting any instance in which we're considered celebrities and any time when we were treated any differently to an ordinary human being. I watched us holding hands, smiling at each other, and speaking words of predictable care and devotion which could not be heard through the medium of the yellowing paper.

It was my favourite picture of us, a picture I couldn't find anywhere else.

Ron had scrawled something just below the picture in his untidy handwriting, an underlying gesture of great friendship punctuating each messy black letter:

"Here you are, mate, I knew you liked this picture, so I managed to procure one. Hope you like it. Ron."

I smiled, partly at the assiduousness of his motive, and at the little fact that Hermione had succeeded in augmenting his vocabulary with the fresh word of "procure".

I turned my attention back to the photograph, and I came to the interesting conclusion that even though the Prophet is interfering, meddlesome, discourteous, boorish, offensive, inaccurate, often uncouth, unsympathetic and frankly a bit of an arse, they took bloody brilliant photographs.

Who would think that a newspaper which caused such trouble in my life would ultimately give me a little seed of happiness, albeit just a seed. That seed was surrounded by a whole heap of bad soil. Strange, really, how the little roots broke through all that poison and blossomed into something so prominent, so perfect.

I closed the album, causing a little puff a dust to stream out of the nooks and crannies of the pages. I gently placed it on top of the others, intending to exit my solace and descend back down into Ginny's inviting arms, but something else caught my eye. Nestled deep in a box with the words "Ginny's stuff" labelled on one side was a sparkly blue book. It was small, but nevertheless it had appeared, abruptly, outstanding.

I picked it up, and opened up the first page. Ginny's small, cramped writing met my eyes, accompanied with her doodles of stick figures adjourning in little spaces between the text.

Each little stick-figure was accompanied by another, with one always having long red hair, and the other messy black hair, in various embraces. I smiled, my heart fluttering with the sentiment. I turned the page to see an open piece of her writing, declaring openly to the parchment the phrases "GinnyLUVHarry" and "HG4EVER". I laughed.

I turned another page to see the same image of her and me, in Diagon Alley, covering an entire page, and I pictured her smiling warmly every time she observed this one picture, just as I did. She'd even written "Prophet's finally got it right..." in the margin.

I smiled, thinking of how the media had made two people happy, even in a small, highly mawkish way, and however inadvertently or with mixed intentions. I sat down on the old floorboards, the sound of London in my ears, and the feeling of love in my heart, coming to the final conclusion, that, in this very rare instant, the newspapers had given us both a memento for us to reflect and love over for time to come. Presented in books and albums designed to collect happiness, as if happiness was as abundant as the rain which currently came so fervently from the heavens, it seemed as if, on this day, the newspapers have finally given me the little bit of happiness which they've failed to given me in sixteen years.

Let's just hope, unlike the rain, that the happiness doesn't stop.


End file.
